"Young Digital Creators" is a UNESCO programme encouraging young people (age 12-18) to be reflective, creative, and interactive with the use of ICTs in addressing global challenges of development and expressing their point of view on socio-cultural values through the universal language of Art in its digital form.

The kit especially talks about how an online learning environment could help students gain understanding and build meaning to certain topics where our local knowledge and culture can serve as source from which creative expressions are produced. The significance of this learning experience lies above all in the collaborative process and the spirit of openness in sharing one’s own view to the global community and being able to listen to other’s voices.

The community is built around a common theme of interest and maintained through exchanges among young peers. The sense of community is initiated by physical contact with local classmates but is clearly extended to a larger and diversified community through the use of technology.

We cannot deny that ICTs has become one of the most powerful means to produce, preserve and communicate the fruits of human creativity. It does not merely serve as a technological tool or instrument but as a window and forum making the learning more participatory and interactive, furthermore overcoming language barriers and cultural differences.

Supporting young people in their right to create, disseminate, and distribute their creative and cultural expressions, as well as to benefit from access to the diversity of expressions and interaction between cultures, is truly a means to encourage dialogue and build mutual respect for cultural values and differences.

Doyun Lee, Project Coordinator, UNESCO DigiArts